


Prelude to a Wrong Thing

by th_esaurus



Category: Murder Mysteries - Neil Gaiman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-23
Updated: 2008-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:26:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1636388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The name of the angel was Carasel, and it was his function to sate the Curiosity of the Lord.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prelude to a Wrong Thing

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to sunsetmog and cadetdru for checking it over, despite not knowing the story and not knowing me, respectively. And thank you so much for the requester for asking for this. If nothing else, it gave me a great opportunity to re-read that wonderful story.
> 
> Written for Holly

 

 

Raguel did not know for how long he stood in his cell, as it was unimportant. There was before his name and after it, which had yet to occur; _Time_ was a work in progress. This didn't matter. 

There was plenty to occupy him: the infinite splendour of his walls, the way they shimmered along the spectrum as the light outside changed; the bodies passing briefly by his window like apparitions; the straight lines of the spires that he could see, not in rows, but regulated in a pattern that seemed both beautiful and incomprehensible. There were angels behind their own windows, each an echo of Raguel's form as he looked down at his limbs and back at his pearl wings, though each unique in its structure, its exact appearance. Raguel wondered what his own individual anomaly was. He could wonder on this until a thousand figures had passed by his cell, and then be caught anew by the way the light reflected from the silver walls. 

But this story does not concern Raguel. He witnessed only the beginning - the Naming of an angel, its first flight and descent into the great unseen City. He did not hear what it was called, nor its purpose. Not at this point; later, perhaps.

The name of the angel was Carasel, and it was his function to sate the Curiosity of the Lord. 

No angel had the power of the Word. Carasel knew this as instinctively as he knew how to fly. But once Carasel was given an idea to consider, he treated each like his own creation. He nurtured them as he would a child, as though watching them grow and blossom was the only thing that mattered. The will of the Lord was a distant greater good - Carasel lived for immediacy. He made a patchwork of concepts and wrapped himself inside it each night, letting every thought and theory wash over him, cleansing and warm. 

He threw himself into _Identity_ , though he was merely a junior on the project, staring at his luminescent skin for great stretches at a time. He drew diagrams upon his cell wall of words that had only recently begun to exist: me, myself, I. Different. Strange. He discovered that, on certain surfaces, in a certain light, his own face became a separate entity, visible but not tangible. The Hall of Being congratulated him on his mirror hypothesis, and for the first time Carasel felt his function come upon him, whole and organic and all-encompassing. It was addictive. Carasel was brought into the grand designer's presence, and he shook Phanuel's hand, all the while consumed by his own glow. Phanuel had a harried look about him, and one of slight disdain. Carasel didn't mind. Carasel was his function.

He was put on the _Sleep_ think-tank, as it had been lagging behind expectations. With _Time_ still a fledgling model, the group was floundering: for how long did _Sleep_ occur? How often? Was it necessary? One of his peers, Saraquael, voiced concern that _Sleep_ and _Time_ would clash drastically, once implemented, on account of the planned universal movement and the shift of the Land. He was brushed aside. It was not the group's place to consider other projects. Each idea was mutually exclusive until it was a physical part of the plan, and it was the two designers' place to stir and mix and mould. Carasel was quiet for the remainder of the meeting, and when it was time to return to their cells and marvel, he approached Saraquael, and touched his arm, and led him aside, and asked him if they might walk through the Silver City together.

"I think you are right," Carasel told him at once. Saraquael seemed to find this funny. He had a humble smile, and wore it often. 

"It is not my place to be right," Saraquael said. His bare feet made no sound or mark on the gleaming pavement, and he cast no shadow on the spires that flanked them. He held his wings close to his back, and his hands clasped behind him. Carasel judged him on all these things, but only absently. _Identity_ was not his field any longer. "It is only my place to question."

"Do we not question in the pursuit of truth? To be right and certain?"

Saraquael laughed gently. "You are the prodigy, then." 

It was a statement. That confused Carasel. 

They walked until it seemed good to stop, and then parted ways. Saraquael dwelt on the far side of the City, near to where the spires thinned out, and the light danced more frantically, and the Dark hovered, always static, on the edge of the spectrum. Carasel didn't often venture that far because when he asked questions of the Dark, it had only questions in return. It unsettled him. He went back to his research instead.

Carasel did not go to the Hall of Being for some time. He had been sleeping. When he awoke, he realised that something had passed, and it would never return. He wrote this down. On another space on his wall, he wrote the word _unseeing_. On another space, he wrote _black_. On another, he wrote, _absence_. It became an equation, scrawling across his cell and looping round on itself, beautiful and incomprehensible and frightening. 

After a while, which might have been an eternity, he looked around to see Saraquael perched on his windowsill. "The Hall is singing out for you," he said wryly. "They are in turmoil."

"I almost have it. Let me---It's close."

Carasel presented _Night_ as a new concept that he and Saraquael had devised. The accolades were sung like hallelujahs; the applause as loud as rhapsody. Carasel's function was louder still, ringing in his ears like a symphonic cacophony. It was all he needed to hear. Saraquael stood by his side silently, understanding, as Carasel drew the details onto the plan with his fingertips. 

"It was yours," he said, as Carasel fell into himself once more.

"You were there. Those conditions - you at the window, my mind, my hand, the way your wings blocked some of the light - that is what let _Night_ come into existence. You helped."

"Then I'm glad of missing you."

"How so?"

Saraquael shrugged. It was a great shifting of his shoulders, a pose that Carasel had never seen before. He wanted to touch it, to feel with his own thumbs the way Saraquael's muscles aligned to let him move like that. But the motion was fleeting, like so many things. "I missed your presence in the Hall, so I sought you out. I am glad some use came of it." He reached out and touched Carasel's hand. It wasn't a greeting, and it wasn't congratulations. It was the same gesture as Carasel had felt a thousand times before, but in this context, it seemed gratuitous.

No, no--nothing was pointless.

Carasel turned his palm to Saraquael's and held his hand. They stood together like that, until they parted.

Saraquael was made Carasel's permanent partner. They were given space in the Hall to work, tools to write with, authority to question: lower than Phanuel's clearance, and far lower than Zephkiel's, but enough that Carasel glowed with anticipation. 

They were given a new project, and its name was _Love_.

Raguel did not know what _Love_ was. He saw, from his cell, in a spire across the courtyard, through a window that hid nothing, two angels kneel together, and touch each other's bare skin, and press their open mouths against one another, and smile, and still smile. He didn't understand, nor later remember, but all was well. It was not his function to know. Only to wait.

 


End file.
